


The Feast of All Saints

by linman



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:06:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/pseuds/linman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first of November has some strange things to reveal to the denizens of Godric's Hollow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feast of All Saints

A pearlescent light shone in the half-overcast night sky, broken by the shape of a small cottage that was now visible to anyone who cared to look.  The roof of the cottage did not cut an even shape; something had blasted a corner of it, and the jagged edge seemed to beckon to the cold night air, inviting it inside.

            A small trembling man crept along the hedgerow, looking constantly over one shoulder and the other.  But the blast had not roused the neighbors—no, not in times like these—and everything was quiet.  He paused at the place where the shadow of the hedge gave way to the open space between gate and front door; then a rat scurried the distance, and took cover in the darkness of the porch before assuming a much larger shape.

            The front door was open.  The young man, now trembling harder than ever, eased himself inside slowly.  Even so, he tripped over an inert form on the floor.  When he got his balance back he took out his wand and lit it: the pale beam found at once the face of another young man with wry black hair.  The man’s glasses had fallen askew; the dead eyes were half-open and opaque. 

            The young man swallowed his gorge and stepped around the body into the house.  He knew, without having to search, where the stairs were, but he kept his wand lit and took each step one at a time, unable to stop the small whimper in the back of his throat.

            His hesitant but unerring steps took him to the bedroom of the small boy who had been the cause of all the trouble.  He knew by now what he would find there.

            Or he thought he did.

            His wandlight glanced into the room and illuminated it, falling almost at once on three objects: a crib; the body of a dead woman slumped at its foot; and in the crib, a living toddler, standing and shivering, with both tears and blood on its face.

            He dropped his wand.  As he groped for it and raised it again, the boy gave a small hoarse cry—he must have screamed himself out long ago—and raised his arms to be picked up: a gesture of recognition.

            With a supreme effort the man fought down the urge to vomit and cast his wandlight into every corner of the room, searching.  If the plan had gone wrong, there ought to have been one more body there.  But there was nothing.  Nothing at all, but the wreckage of the wall and roof and the open sky shining, incongruously peaceful, through it.

            The boy chuffed into a small sob and lifted his arms more insistently.  The man ignored him; for he had spotted something.

            A wand lay on the floor, rolled to the corner of the room; a wand the man recognized.  Swiftly he went to it and picked it up, and the floor creaked dangerously under his feet.  There was no sign of its owner, so he retreated from the dangerous part of the room, carrying his prize.

            The boy began to cry.  The sound was unendurable: after one glance the young man fled from his sight, taking the wand with him.  The last thing he heard as he stumbled from the house and made his escape was the faint sound of the child’s voice, screaming and helpless.

 

*

 

The night sky was gathering grey.  Morning had not come yet, but it was coming.  A large dark figure strode along the road with quick heavy steps, coming from the village.  He could not have hidden himself along the hedgerow even if he had wanted to: he was a great hulk of a man whom anyone would notice.  He carried in one meaty hand a lantern, and in the other a shabby umbrella.  Behind wild black hair and beard his face was grim and frightened.

            He opened the gate, and slowed his steps coming up to the house, his eyes on the ruined roof above till he reached the front door.  Stooping inside, he stopped when the lamplight fell on the dead man in the lobby.  He paused to hang his umbrella on his wrist and swipe the sudden tears from his face, before edging ever-so-gently round the dead man and ducking under the lintel into the lounge.

            He found the door to the stairs and eased himself up them, testing each riser to make sure it would bear his considerable weight.  At the top he paused to give his lantern a broad sweep—he looked more frightened now—before choosing his direction.

            The wild man had chosen correctly:  he soon found himself stooping to look into the wrecked bedroom.  The warm light of the lantern fell on the red hair of the dead woman, the gleam of polished wood that was the crib—and the living child, who was pulling himself to his tiny feet against the rail, shivering with cold.

            “Blimey,” the man uttered.  Then he said a few more things, in a very hoarse voice.

            The boy and the man looked wide-eyed into each other’s faces for a long silent moment.  Then, hesitantly, the child lifted his arms, fresh beseeching tears starting in his eyes.

            The wild man put a step into the room.  But the floor creaked so badly that he stopped.  Glancing quickly around, he assessed his options.  He needed to get the boy out of the crib, preferably without his seeing his dead mother on the floor, and he needed to do it without sending the house into total collapse.  He looked down at the umbrella hanging on his arm…no, better not risk it, not for something this delicate.

            The child was crying now, too tired to scream but unable to bear his predicament any longer.  “Don’ cry, Harry,” the wild man soothed, before realizing that it was a stupid thing to say; there was every reason in the world to cry.  He was crying himself.

            Slowly, slowly, he inched into the room.  The whole house creaked as his weight moved toward its vulnerable place, and he was careful to bear toward the end of the room that was undamaged by the blast.  (There was no sign of Him anywhere; thank Merlin for that.)  When he was a few feet from the crib, he stopped to make sure the whole place wasn’t going to come down around them.  Harry’s crying changed to a reedy, exhausted wail, and stopped.

            “Yeh got yer blankie?” he asked, in a husky whisper.  Every boy his age had a blankie, and the predawn held a deep chill.

            For answer the boy bent and picked up the corner of a blue blanket, and held it toward him.

            “Righ’, then, bring it with yeh.”  Balancing slowly, he leaned with his free arm over the end of the crib, reaching.  The house creaked horribly.  His arm was round the boy, who had tottered toward him; he had a grasp of him; he was pulling him up and over the end rail with his blanket; he had him.  The house shook, and dust fell from the ceiling.

            The wild man waited, frozen, for the worst.  But presently the shuddering under him stopped, and he felt safe to inch back, slowly, slowly, the child cradled against his chest with one arm.  One of the boy’s hands found its way under his beard and gripped his collar; it was icy cold to the touch.

            “Gotta get yeh someplace warm,” he muttered.

            He huddled the boy against him as gently and as tightly as possible as he made his cautious way to the stairs and down.  He didn’t want Harry to see his father, either.

            At last he made it out of the house.  But he was nowhere near out of the woods: there was a knot of people standing at the gate under the lightening sky.

            No choice but to go through them.  He strode to the gate, and out.

            A man caught his sleeve.  “Hagrid, what’s happened?  The Potters’ house—what’s happened?  And where is He?”

            “He’s not there,” Hagrid said shortly.  “Gone.”

            “But—”  The other voices clamored, but as quickly stopped, for the child had raised his head and looked round at them all. 

A woman finally found her voice.  “Well, if the baby’s alive—then—Lily and James—?”

            Hagrid shook his head, fighting off fresh tears.  Everyone looked past him toward the wrecked house.  Murmurs rose among them.

            “Well—Carrington’s out from under Imperius—if You-Know-Who were still—”

            “But then where is He?…”

            And in hushed tones— “And how on earth did Harry survive?”

            “Maybe You-Know-Who didn’t try to—”

            “Not likely,” the first man said, bitterly.  “Look.”

            He was pointing at Harry’s face, where a jagged cut had bled over the eyebrow and down the rounded cheek.

            Silence fell.  Hagrid broke it.

            “Somebody’ll have t’see to the bodies,” he said, choking only a little.  “I’m too heavy ter get Lily down from—”  He stopped, unable to go on.

            The others wilted visibly.  The outspoken man pulled off his nightcap and rested it over his heart.

            “We’ll take care of it, Hagrid,” a woman said stoutly.  “I reckon you’re taking Harry to Dumbledore?”

            Hagrid nodded.  That reminded him.  “I need ter send an owl,” he sniffed.

            “Come with us,” she said; beside her, another man and woman nodded, and began to usher him toward the other houses on the road.

 

*

 

Inside their hosts’ house, Hagrid perched gingerly on the stout sofa and composed his letter.  In the other room the two women were washing and changing Harry, cooing at him; Harry sounded fretful.

 

            Am at Jack McKinnon’s.  Got Harry.  Harry’s alive—just got a cut on his face is all.  Lily and James are—

 

Hagrid paused to blow his nose loudly—

 

            —dead.  No sign of You-Know-Who.  Jack and two others are taking care of L. and J.  Do you want me to bring Harry up to Hogwarts?

 

Hope you’re well.

 

Hagrid

 

He folded up the letter, addressed it, and gave it to the McKinnons’ owl, who darted smartly out the window into the brightening dawn.  In the lightening air, Hagrid could see other birds darting purposefully in all directions, dark against the sky.

            In the next room, Harry’s fussing degenerated into real crying.  The soothing voices of the women had no effect.  “Mmmm-ma,” he wept.

            Hagrid blew his nose again.

            Harry Potter cried, and would not be comforted.

 

*

 

Mrs. McKinnon was just heading into the kitchen, saying something about breakfast, when a silver streak zoomed into the house and flourished into the shape of a phoenix.

            “Don’t come to Hogwarts,” it said with Dumbledore’s voice.  “Take to the road and stay hidden.  Harry is still in danger.  Meet me at midnight, at his aunt’s house.  You know the address.  We will follow the second plan.”

            The phoenix dissolved, just as Mrs. McKinnon came back in.  “Do you care for sausages, Hagrid?”

            But Hagrid was standing up, as much as he could without bumping his head on the ceiling.  “I’m sorry.  Very sorry, but I gotta go.  Dumbledore’s orders.  Got ter take Harry now.”

            “But—”

            With many apologies, and ignoring the McKinnons’ protests, Hagrid went to Harry and scooped him up gently.  Harry’s face was clean now, but his nose was still running freely; still tearful, he nevertheless submitted to be picked up, and nestled miserably against Hagrid’s moleskin coat.

            “Ta for everything,” Hagrid was saying.  “Sorry I can’ stay.  No, I can let myself out.  Thanks.  Thanks—” and he was out the door, into a fully-born blustery November day.

 

*

 

It was a good thing, Hagrid supposed, that he didn’t have to be in Surrey before midnight, because it was going to take him a hell of a long time to get there without using wizard transport.

            The morning brightened, silvered into a dazzling sharpness by the mist that lay over the woods.  He had chosen the small wood road out of Godric’s Hollow, because woods were most comfortable to him, and they also had the advantage of giving the good citizens the impression that he was headed in the direction of Hogwarts.  Soon enough he would cut through the woods to another road he knew about, and head south and east.  But not just yet.

            He had attempted to hide Harry within the lapel of his coat, but Harry didn’t like that, and was quite vocal about it, so Hagrid had settled for wrapping him neatly in his blanket and letting him ride in the crook of his arm.  The boy stopped fussing for a while and lifted his head to peer over Hagrid’s shoulder at the empty road falling away behind them.  Occasionally, he swung his head round, in the unbalanced manner of children, to get a look at the scenery ahead of them as well.  And no wonder, really: he had been in hiding so long he probably had no memory of the wide outdoors.  Hagrid was thankful that his curiosity was keeping him (mostly) quiet.

            Hagrid was the sort of man who could walk all day and not get tired; but he was very aware that his burden, however mighty in ways people couldn’t understand, would need careful looking after.  With half his mind he calculated ways to keep Harry fed and pacified and safely hidden; with the other he mused, beatified, on the honor and pleasure of his task.  It always gave him pleasure to care for and protect things, but this was different, this was special.  Albus Dumbledore had given him a job; but that was before he and Harry had met.

            It was nearly time for him to leave the road and cut through the woods.  He kept his eyes on the undergrowth along the roadside, looking for the best place to slip through without leaving too many traces.  Harry had tired of looking around and was now burrowing fretfully against his front.

            But a sound ahead snagged his attention: a low roar, gathering in pitch and intensity.  The mist ahead, already beginning to burn off, was disturbed into a vague swirl.  Hagrid breathed faster, and stumbled to a halt.  It sounded like a Muggle engine, but Muggles or no Muggles, a huge man walking along a deserted road with a small child was not something anyone would pass without remark.

            Before he could decide to flee, the thing roared into view, and after a few seconds Hagrid recognized the object and the figure astride it.  He relaxed, and stood waiting.

            They didn’t have to wait long.  An enormous Muggle motorcycle skidded to a squealing, grinding halt before them; the young man on it cut the engine and leapt off, pulling off the blood-red helmet in a single motion.

            “Hagrid!” he cried, sweeping away his long dark hair from his face.

            He would have said more, but then he caught sight of the child in Hagrid’s arms, who, after his first cry at the noise, had quieted and had now fixed the stranger with very direct green eyes.

            “Oh God,” he uttered.  “Don’t tell me it’s true!”

            “Dunno what yeh’ve been hearing,” Hagrid said guardedly.

            “It’s all over the country—owl after owl—Voldemort—”

            Hagrid flinched.

            “Where are Lily and James?” the young man demanded.

            Hagrid couldn’t bring himself to say it.

            “_Where are they_?”  The young man’s handsome face was chaotic—Hagrid’s eyes were drawn to his right hand, trembling in a seeking gesture.  Trustworthy the young man might be, but Hagrid’s whole awareness was dedicated to protecting the child, even from chaos.

            “Sirius,” he said, “better calm—”

            Sirius cut him off with a look.  But he did glance at Harry and gather a semblance of control.

            After a moment Hagrid drew breath and forced himself to say the words.

            “They’re dead.”

            Sirius went white, and the muscles in his jaw went rock-hard.  Hagrid blinked away fresh tears, but Sirius did not cry.  Instead he gathered his hair in both hands behind his neck and turned his gaze inward.  He stood there, breathing shallowly, so still that finally Hagrid reached out a large hand and took his shoulder, and shook him slightly.  At the touch the tears finally came into the young man’s eyes.

            “I should’ve—I should’ve—” he uttered, but he didn’t finish the sentence.  “And Harry—”

            “Harry’s all right.  See?”  Hagrid said, shifting the boy in his arm in a gesture of comfort for all of them.  “I’m takin’ him to Dumbledore.”

            “Let me take him,” Sirius said, urgently.  “Let me.  I’m his godfather—”

            Hagrid shook his head gently.  “Can’ do that,” he said.  “Got me orders, haven’t I?  Danger’s not over yet, even though You-Know-Who’s gone—”

            Sirius’s eyes glittered, and his brows and lips hardened into grim lines.  “That’s all right,” he said, staring ahead down the road behind Hagrid.  “I’ve thought of something I need to do.”

            Hagrid had a sudden idea.  “Say—you couldn’t lend me your motorbike for the afternoon, could yeh?”  It was a huge bike; it would take Hagrid’s weight, and give him some maneuverability, though it would mean he’d have to stick to roads.

            “Yeah,” Sirius said, after a startled moment; then, more firmly, “Yeah.  Rather.  Go on ahead.”  He was calculating something to himself, still staring down the road.  “You take it.  I’m not going to need it anymore.”  Before Hagrid could reply, he added, “You know how to work it, right?  It flies, too, you know—that button on the right there, the new one.”

            Hagrid had been on the bike before, once or twice, in the days—not so long ago—when Sirius had shown it off to everyone who’d stand still long enough to admire it.  He nodded.

            “Right then,” Sirius said, very brisk now, though there was still a hint of chaos in his movements as he strapped the helmet to the back of the bike (it was too small for Hagrid to wear).

            “I’ll take care of it,” Hagrid promised him.

            “Of course, of course,” Sirius said, waving away Hagrid’s words distractedly.  “I’ll be going now.”

            “Yeah?  Where?”

            “Godric’s Hollow first,” Sirius said, eyes darkening.  Hagrid opened his mouth to say he didn’t think that was a good idea, but Sirius was clearly not listening to anything but his own thoughts.  “He won’t be there, of course,” he muttered softly, “but I bet I can pick up a scent.”  Before Hagrid could ask who he meant, Sirius shot him a sudden cocky smile, a bitter ghost of his old cheer, and Disapparated with a sharp snap.

            Hagrid looked down at Harry, who was staring at the place Sirius had been with a faint frown.  In the full sunlight, the slash on his brow looked wicked and painful, but was already beginning to heal.

            “So,” Hagrid said, as cheerfully as he could, “fancy a ride on a motorbike?”

 

*

 

Hagrid dawdled on the back roads for the greater part of the morning and afternoon.  He paused in a shaded picnic area, awash in a scutter of dried leaves, to eat the sandwich he’d put in his pocket, giving Harry bits of the bread to gnaw and wishing he’d thought to bring—what did one-year-olds eat, anyway?  It seemed odd not to know; he could feed anything in the forest without thought.  Harry seemed content with his bits of sandwich, however, though he was beginning to look very tired and restless.

            Occasionally Hagrid saw an owl dart overhead, swooping on its broad-daylight message.  Whatever was happening in the rest of the world, he and Harry were cocooned in a solitude broken only by the distant sight of a Muggle lorry or a farmer’s wagon.  Suppose You-Know-Who really was gone.  What then?  It was hard to remember being in a world where that threat didn’t exist.  And according to the plan they were about to follow, Harry would continue to be cocooned like this, to keep the threat at bay.

            Caught between depression and half-cocked alarm, Hagrid drove, pathless, from country road to country road.

 

*

 

By nightfall Harry had grown fussy again.  Hagrid drove the motorbike with one hand and jiggled the child in the other arm, to little avail.  Finally he told Harry, “Reckon it’s time ter fly?  I hear yeh like flyin’.”  Taking a firmer grip on the boy, he reached for the first time to punch the small button Sirius had indicated.

            With a sudden rumble and lurch the motorcycle lifted from the road and began to gain height over the trees.  Harry gave a sudden scream; it sounded as fretful as he had a moment ago, but tailed off in a crow of laughter as he peered over Hagrid’s arm at the ground falling away.  Hagrid’s relief and elation was cut short as the child’s balance shifted in his grip.

            “No, now,” he said nervously, over the rush of air and roar of engine, “stay close to me, Harry.  Don’ want yeh to fall!”

            Hagrid didn’t mind heights, but he was not nearly so enamored as Harry of the sensation of flying a motorcycle.  For one thing, he felt helplessly visible to the world.  Every owl in the country, darting around carrying urgent missives, could see them; and that was to say nothing of the people, Muggle and wizard alike, who would either remark on a huge man flying a motorcycle with a baby in one arm, or recognize them and know what it meant.  And You-Know-Who’s supporters were still out there.

            Hagrid pulled upward on the handlebar and urged them still higher.  The sky around them deepened from late gloaming, to twilight, to deep, chill night.  If the wooded roads were a cocoon, the sky was a limitless space-between, a place one could fly forever and never, it seemed, have to put rubber to road again.

            Hagrid didn’t like this plan much, didn’t like the idea of dropping Harry on a Muggle doorstep and not seeing him again, until he turned eleven, perhaps.  What if he just flew off with him and disappeared?  Hagrid knew perfectly well that his unfaltering hands would guide them to Surrey as planned, but alone and high up in the night, the dreaming was easy.

            He looked down to check their course.  Below, he could see pricks of light in the black land, some of them pale—Muggle lights—and some a gleaming, changeful orange:  bonfires.  He hoped the wizards celebrating below would not see him; their enthusiasm was nearly as dangerous as the vengefulness of Death Eaters.  Ahead of them, the ragged clouds took on a misty orange glow from a large constellation of lights below it.  They approached; they passed over, and as the clouds between them and the city curled and pulled apart, Hagrid studied the shape made between the city and the surrounding villages.  Bristol, he was fairly sure.  Good, they were on course.

            He stole a glance down at Harry, who after his first happy bounces had settled down.  As he watched, Harry gave a small, delicate yawn and let his drooping eyelids fall shut, oblivious to the great wind flapping the blanket around him.

            Hagrid returned his eyes to the not-road ahead.  A strange feeling was stealing all through him, undoing all the taut places, lightening him and his burden and the bike.  But seven villages had passed below before he realized what it was.

            It was happiness.

 

*

 

_finis_


End file.
